Georgia Zerva

“A lot of my classmates didn’t end up well, I know, even in their personal life. [...] I reckon that my husband could tell stories of how difficult it was to live with me in the first years, before I actually understood that we formed a family and that certain rules must be kept and so on. But yes, our marriage is still very much alive.”

“As far as our children are concerned, they knew Greek when they were at pre-school age. When I gave birth to them, I automatically started speaking Greek to them. It was easy. I myself was surprised. I didn’t know how to say ‘hapalo’, I didn’t have this children’s vocabulary, motherly vocabulary. [...] Then the children started going to nursery, to playschool. They told us, you should speak Czech to them, they don’t understand us. And my husband replied, you can’t ask that of us, for us to speak to our children in an unnatural way. We will speak in such a way as is natural to us.”

“As far as games are concerned, the older children taught us Greek games. And those were usually games you played outside. I still remember playing ‘fotia’ - ‘fire’. [...] We were split into two groups, mostly into boys and girls. The boys tried to swamp us. We had our designated spot. It was a chasing game. That means we mixed together, chased each other, and as soon as one hit the other, he or she was out of the game. So we had to run round the enemy place without anyone knocking us out, and then to get back to our place and say ‘fotia’ - ‘fire’. That meant that the person remained in his group. And then off we went again and again. The group who ran out of members lost. [...] ‘Tzami’ was also played in two groups, we gathered flat rocks. Those were placed on top of each other in the middle, then we threw a cloth ball at the spire. Tzami basically means a mosque. [...] And as before, if you hit, you stayed in your group, and if not, you got knocked out. And again the group without any members left lost.”